5 Categorically Strange and Unnecessary Tech Solutions

As a tech lover and someone who writes about the category for a living, I come in contact with a wide variety of technologies. When done well, devices, accessories and appliances can prove life changing, enhancing what we already do, but better and easier. But when done wrong, whether it be because of missing features, poor execution, or overall design quality, well, they can seem laughably weird...

Here's a few items that qualify as possibly the weirdest tech accessories of the year:

1. The Personal Speaker Pillow ($29.99)Plug a phone or digital music device into this pillow and listen to...muffled music? I know, strange and totally unnecessary in this era of wireless speakers and excellent headphones.

2. Digital Luggage Scale ($31.99)This accessory is probably meant exclusively for frequent flyers who want to know just how much they're going to pay in weight overages at the airport. Or perhaps there are some people out there that really want to know how much weight they're rolling through the airport. But this seems like an unnecessary device except for a small minority out there.

3. Digital Flask Charger ($89.95)This portable digital charger is not actually a flask. It's just supposed to trick people into thinking it's a flask (which is strange, since it makes more sense to be hiding a drinking habit rather than a USB charging addiction). Clearly, I'm not the target audience.

5. SOS Hand Crank Charger ($24.99)In theory, I get this. It's for emergency situations. Except that I don't know many serious tech heads who don't also own/carry a backup source. That and I've tried using one of these hand-cranked models once and it was a total joke. 1,000 plus cranks around and one arm cramp later and I came away with only a minute of phone power.

Liz is a writer and filmmaker from Minneapolis. She was nominated for a Webby and won an Emmy for Science of Watchmen, a documentary short about the physics in the comic book movie. She’s a tech obsessive, verified nerd and total Anglophile.